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• W2000466300 abstract "A new study shows mixed planting can greatly boost maize yields. Nigel Williams reports. A new study shows mixed planting can greatly boost maize yields. Nigel Williams reports. A new study finds that African governments may be able to reduce the amount they spend on fertilizers by encouraging farmers to alternate maize with certain bean crops. Scientists in the African nation of Malawi have tested farming methods that produce the same yields using just half the fertilizer — a big potential saving for the Malawi government, and a potential model for other developing countries. In recent years, Malawi has taken major steps to increase its faltering food production by making synthetic fertilizer and high-yielding maize seed available to farmers at a steep discount. Nationwide, the programme has been credited with increasing maize production by up to 30 per cent. But Sieglinde Snapp, from Michigan State University and lead author of the study, says that the cost of the project takes up around one sixth of Malawi's national budget. “There's a lot of concern by the Malawi government in what is the sustainability of this because if you invest in fertilizer, there is less ability to invest in education and roads or other things. Obviously there are trade-offs.” And there have been growing worries about the future of the Mchinji district of northern Malawi which borders Zambia. This has traditionally been the country's most productive maize-growing region, where smallholder farmers have, over many years, produced large crops to feed themselves and sell on the surplus across the country. But in recent years, Mchinji's yields have started to fall. “We have noticed a decline in soil fertility and many of us are failing to produce enough to last the whole year for our families and sell any surplus,” said one farmer. Mchinji farmers are now adopting a range of strategies including irrigation and boosting soil fertility with compost alongside chemical fertilizer. So the new study on using legumes to boost soil fertility is particularly timely. Snapp and her colleagues wanted to see whether farmers and governments could get more value from their fertilizer investments by adding legumes to the planting schedule. Farmers have long known that legumes naturally fertilize the soil with nitrogen. But they also believe that legumes typically don't provide the kind of productivity boost possible with synthetic fertilizer. To address this issue, Snapp and her colleagues began a number of long-term, large-scale trials. We wanted “to test if economic and ecological sustainability could be improved,” she said. The team carried out manipulative experiments with crop diversity across a country-wide trial over a decade that involved both temporal and spatial treatments to compare monoculture maize with legume-diversified maize including annual and shrubby, semi-perennial plants intercropped and in rotation. “There have been 100 years of research on biological-based agriculture in southern Africa,” the authors write. “Rotation of maize with annual grain legumes, such as soybean (Glycine max) or peanut (Arachis hypogaea) have been shown to increase maize yields,” they write, but “on-farm gains have tended to be modest or nil.” These annual legumes were included in the trials alongside the shrubby varieties. Snapp says the results highlighted the potential in shrubby legumes like pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan) or mucana (Mucana pruriens) which mature more slowly than other legumes. This means that they spend more time in the ground producing their nitrogen fertilizer. And the ground stays covered with living vegetation for longer — another major benefit for the soil. In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (online), Snapp says the maize and shrubby legume annual rotation produced as much grain as growing maize with synthetic fertilizer both years. “We're producing the same amount of grain, but it was obtained at half the amount of fertilizer.” Spending less on fertilizer helped make the shrubby legume rotation three to four times more profitable — which Snapp says is critical if farmers are going to change their practices. Plus, she adds, yields from the shrubby legume rotation were more reliable year after year. “A lot of people just focus on the production. But if it isn't stable, it isn't every year you can count on that, that puts your country at risk.” Although the pigeon pea was a potentially welcome additional crop, it is highly vulnerable to herbivore attack. Mucana is more resistant, but requires extensive processing to reduce its toxicity before it is edible by humans. “Renewed efforts by plant breeders to develop insect-deterrent properties in legumes — without relying on anti-nutritional biochemistry — would support greener farming,” they write. Snapp says the shrubby legume rotation can reduce the risk of food shortages at lower cost — to farmers and national governments — and reduce reliance on expensive synthetic fertilizers. Glenn Denning, a specialist in agriculture and food security at Columbia University believes legumes serve important functions in improving the soil and providing a source of protein but that there is still an important place for synthetic fertilizers. “It was a surprising and welcome result that shrubby semi-perennial legumes performed reliably across diverse soil types and precipitation patterns,” the authors write. “There are initial steps being taken in Malawi, including formation of a national legume task force, release of improved varieties and government support for multiplying legume seeds for a future agricultural subsidy program.”" @default.
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• W2000466300 date "2011-01-01" @default.
• W2000466300 modified "2023-09-26" @default.
• W2000466300 title "Biodiversity boost to African crop" @default.
• W2000466300 doi "https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2010.12.028" @default.
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